Love these stories. That's the way you do it. No whining. Pick a goal and work harder than others to achieve it. Plain and simple. Also very much related to

Love these stories. That's the way you do it. No whining. Pick a goal and work harder than others to achieve it. Plain and simple. Also very much related to another discussion where the top n% (the rich) are blamed for just about everything. Here's where I get pounded [1] for daring to say opportunity in the US is what you make of it and the top n% have nothing to do with it. I am sure there are a thousand people who want to be Bill Mei. Yet few are willing to take the risk and invest the time and effort he did in order to rise well past the average. What's sad is when some choose to blame people like Bill for their own failings. Want a formula to be rich by the time you retire at, say, 55 years of age? Work your tail off so that by the time you are 20 you can start to put away $1,000 per month. In other words, be Bill. Be frugal. Invest the money somewhere relatively safe where you can earn at least 7% per year on average. If you pay attention that is not difficult at all in the long term. Marry well. Be frugal. Do this and you'll reach 55 years of age with around two million dollars in the bank. Continue to do it until you are 65 and you'll have nearly four million. Or, if you actually start drawing $25,000 a year from your investment at 56 years of age, you will reach nearly $3.4 million by age 65. It's actually better than that because I compounded interest annually in my calculation. With the opportunities available today in the US (and other places) almost anyone can work hard for a couple of years and get to the point where they can save $1,000 a month. This is particularly true for a couple. The key is not to burn cash on stupid shit, which can be hard. After a while you make it part of your normal process. I drive a car with over 200,000 miles. I can go out and pay cash for just about any new car in the market today. Waste of money. Not that hard folks. I wish they taught kids about finance and money in high school. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13848530 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13848530